Biography Of Boris Johnson Goes For The Salacious Detail

Rachel HoldsworthBiography Of Boris Johnson Goes For The Salacious Detail

You might have spotted that The Times is serialising a new biography about Boris Johnson, and at first glance it seems juicy enough for other papers to have leapt upon certain tidbits like slavering dogs on a prime rump steak.

Did you know, for example, that Boris is accused of fathering a child by the girlfriend of the man who gave £80,000 to the towering sculpture in the Olympic Park, sometime dubbed Piffle Tower? Or that at the start of his tenure Johnson tried to dump a load of work onto his deputies, until reportedly being told to "get a grip" on his Mayoral duties?

The thing is that, yes, yes you did know all these things, because the Pierre Rolin / cuckold story has been swirling around in the press for months, and the reasons given for 'First Deputy' Tim Parker's resignation at the time was that such responsibilities were inappropriate for an unelected official. What this biography - and its accompanying publicity - could be mainly indicating is that the forthcoming Mayoral election campaign could be fought dirtily, with Boris's opponents being less coy about bringing up his occasionally sordid past.